Defending the invincible

posted at 2:15 pm on October 18, 2009 by Doctor Zero

Almost every column written in defense of Rush Limbaugh over the last few days, following the vicious campaign to slander him as a racist, has included a statement along the lines of “Rush is rich, powerful, intelligent, and articulate, so he can take care of himself, and he’ll be just fine.” I don’t mean to disparage the authors of these sentiments, but I must disagree. I know the most popular conservative broadcaster in America doesn’t need some anonymous guest-author on a blog to defend him, but I’m going to do it anyway, without the slightest reservation due to his wealth and power.

Much strife and misery has been visited on this country by the idea that the rights and prerogatives of the rich and successful are diminished by their fortunes… that we should feel no remorse about seizing their property, or insulting their honor, because they’ll still be comfortably rich at the end of the day. We have become much too relaxed about laughing off vile slander, because the target can nurse his wounded soul from the plush accommodations of a West Palm Beach mansion. Honor is as valuable to the millionaire as to the pauper.

I’ll probably never be part of a consortium that purchases a football team, but I understand what it means to watch a dream bleed to death. My hopes and ambitions may be smaller than Rush Limbaugh’s, but they have exactly the same value to me. Whether those dreams are carved from pixels, paper, or platinum, they are equally priceless. It requires only a drop of the moral imagination utterly lacking in the people who slandered Limbaugh to guess what it feels like, when a man whose life revolves around words and ideas sees his dreams boiled away by words he didn’t speak, and ideas he has never held.

The events of the past week were about more than simply thwarting Limbaugh’s desire to buy into a football team. There was the naked greed of parasites like Al Sharpton, desperate to maintain his relevance in a world that has wisely stripped him of the power to destroy a man’s life with a phony rape allegation, or launch murderous riots. There was the blind personal hatred of Limbaugh, by people who long ago tired of watching him rewrite their plans for the part of America that refuses to submit to them. And, of course, this was the latest offensive in a bitter war against the ideas that Limbaugh has long served, as their most cheerful and effective defender. Limbaugh’s enemies in that war are angry because they’re frightened. They’re frightened because all of their estimates and projections said they should have been able to claim victory by now.

Backed up against the wall, and forced to admit the most damaging quotes used against Limbaugh were forgeries, his accusers are left stammering that he’s simply too “divisive” to be involved with ownership of an NFL team. What a bleak example of the totalitarian mindset! If you disagree with the approved ideas distributed by the collective, you’re “divisive” and unfit for membership in polite society. I suppose Limbaugh is saturated with divisiveness particles, whose half-life will extend for decades, but the warning to others is clear: rid yourselves of those “divisive” ideas and get with the program.

Perhaps the President could direct one of his many czars to prepare a list of certified “divisive” positions, and which aspects of society are closed to offenders. It would save people like David Checketts, the investor seeking to purchase the Rams, the time he wasted inviting Limbaugh to join his consortium. Imagine how much more convenient it would have been for Checketts, if he could have pulled up a handy whitehouse.gov web page and learned Rush was too divisive to be minority owner of a football team! The Homeland Security spectrum of terrorist alert levels could be used to measure divisiveness ratings. I’d be willing to give them an email address, so the system could send me a warning message when I approach Level Orange. What do you suppose the divisiveness rating for someone like Jeremiah Wright would be? He built a tidy personal fortune from his Ministry of Hate – would he be allowed to buy a stake in an NFL team?

Only the most gullible dupes, and people who rely on CNN for “news”, seriously think Rush Limbaugh is a racist. The dishonesty and cynicism behind dimwitted assertions that he wanted to buy an NFL team to role-play the life of a plantation owner is breathtaking. His accusers don’t really think he harbors some elusive racist demon, which he suppresses just long enough to become friends with Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, and Tony Dungy. The people who read this crap should be at least as angry over the insult to their intelligence as Limbaugh is about the insult to his honor. This kind of weapons-grade stupidity is one of the things America can no longer afford.

Limbaugh’s accusers want him burned at the stake for the crime of effective conservatism, not the racism they were so eager to lie about last week. The American public should think long and hard about which side of this ideological struggle should be on trial. Rush Limbaugh’s ideas did not produce a titanic deficit, double-digit unemployment, and global adversaries who can barely stop laughing at our President long enough to pretend they respect him. His ideas did not put disciples of Saul Alinsky, Chairman Mao, and Alex Jones in positions of power. His words are not deployed to conceal hundreds of billions in stolen “stimulus” money, thousand-page Mad Lib bills riddled with blank paragraphs, and massive offenses against individual liberty. His EIB Network endorses $1500 Sleep Number beds, not “saved or created” jobs costing half a million bucks apiece. Unlike the “Hope and Change” Administration, he doesn’t spend his three hours on the radio each weekday listing all the things you will no longer be allowed to do. He is the champion of ideas so powerful that his enemies fear the merest taste of them.

Rush Limbaugh has raised his voice in defense of freedom countless times over the years. I’m happy to exercise my freedom to raise my voice in defense of him. I invite you to do the same. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t “need” it. He deserves it. All of us do. There is little we can do to reverse the injustice of the St. Louis Rams affair, but we can make it up to Rush by giving him the chance to deliver a hell of a show on the day after Election Day, next year. If CNN is foolish enough to continue employing cretins like Rick Sanchez by then, all of them should be turning in a very enjoyable performance on that day, as well.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.To see the comments on the original post, look here.

See what happens when you give a joke like Afrolib a second chance……he comes back and spews that again, WE ARE ALL RACISTS.
See why some of us DID NOT ACCEPT HIS APOLOGY, BECAUSE HE’LL JUST DO IT AGAIN.

The left is afraid that if people listen to Rush they might wake up from their indoctrinated comma, which the libs have been carefully crafting for years.
What I find so frustrating is that the average person doesn’t realize the obvious. They are being told on a daily basis whom to hate by moronic celebrities, race-baiters, liberal professors and the MSM. They did this with the Republican Party, GW Bush, Sarah Palin and now Rush Limbaugh. The left will continue to lie in order to destroy anybody they deem a threat to the truth. We are in for a fight and I will be on the side of Rush, the right side, that I’m 100% sure of.

Factual statements can be used to bolster a racist ARGUMENT, but when I simply state Barack Hussein Obama is half black and half white, where is the racism? You know how many people are accused of being racists simply for a truthful statement? Oh yeah, but they know what people are thinking, just like they know what Rush thinks….I forgot.

See what happens when you give a joke like Afrolib a second chance……he comes back and spews that again, WE ARE ALL RACISTS.
See why some of us DID NOT ACCEPT HIS APOLOGY, BECAUSE HE’LL JUST DO IT AGAIN.

HornetSting on October 18, 2009 at 7:22 PM

Oh i get it, i make an ill advised statement, apologized but can’t call out others who make similar ill advised statements right?

Not quite. Standard math tests were considered racist in NYC some years ago, so the tests had to be changed to ‘accommodate’ minorities. I don’t know how that was, but 2+2=4 might be different in minority neighborhoods.

Johnny has 14 rounds in his Glock. Marcus has 18 in his. Which one is the racist, and what’s the average speed of an unladen barn swallow in Africa on a clear day?

Not a lot of the usual fannish NFL chatter going on in the channels and I see there’s no NFL open thread here this week. It would be tough to do a full-blown boycott. We all want to follow our teams (Go Pottsville Maroons!)

The owners are the usual top executive types, clueless and cowardly. The players, though, are in a — now officially, for all to see — politicized union. The next strike will be about upping their percent of the gross. Perhaps a SOFTcott. Stop buying the licensed merchandise. Ignore the advertisers. Watch the games with the sound down so you’re not subject to the inane promos for all the network’s clone shaky-cam crime shows and humor-free sex sit coms. (Bonus: You’ll find the commentators add little to the NFL viewing experience.)

The question is if that’s in FACT true could it be a racist statement?

cjk on October 18, 2009 at 8:18 PM

Yes, it could. You can cherry pick facts, and the moment you do, and present them as if they were the entire universe of facts, you have lied. It’s the global warming issue all over again — you pick the right ring samples to make your point, and, voila — the hockey stick curve.

So, a deliberate lie made by presenting cherry picked facts can indeed be racist.

Whether you’re black, as you say you are, or just posing as black, it makes no difference.

ThereGoesTheNeighborhood on October 18, 2009 at 6:00 PM

And why would i be “posing as black” if i am not? What is there to gain from that? You my friend need to reexamine yourself.

Afrolib on October 18, 2009 at 6:06 PM

Instant authority to pronounce on racial issues, possibly? As I said, it doesn’t matter how authentically black you are — if you are — it doesn’t confer to you the right to decide what is or is not racist. Calling Obama a muslim is not racist, not even subtly. You need to reexamine in yourself this attempt to conflate all criticism of Obama with racism.

BTW, it’s also not racist to call Obama a fascist or a communist. Just in case you were working up to it.

I disagree, the Global Warming crap does use some facts, but just because false conclusions are drawn from them doesn’t make those facts immoral or wrong in any way. I can say factually the following:A) 70% of black children are born to a fatherless home. B)Homicide is the number one reason for death among black males. C)Only 50% of black students graduate HS……….This isn’t racist. Now if I were to conclude that black are in someway inferior to whites, that would be racist and in my true opinion not a fact and in fact false…….On the aside I believe these factual numbers are due to leftist, race baiting, poverty pimps most of whom are white men.

As usual, superbly worded, Dr. Zero! I TOTALLY agree with you and believe that Rush has been grievously slandered. The low-life slugs responsible for these lies are beyond contemptible. Limbaugh’s success is testimate to his honesty; something that will NEVER be said about sham Sharpton and his racist ilk. I am fully behind Rush, however the only thing I cannot understand is Limbaugh’s fascination with professional football. In my world the NFL is a collection of overweight, overpaid thugs, bums, criminals and malcontents. Beyond that they have now proven themselves to be utter hypocrites!!!

Much strife and misery has been visited on this country by the idea that the rights and prerogatives of the rich and successful are diminished by their fortunes… that we should feel no remorse about seizing their property, or insulting their honor, because they’ll still be comfortably rich at the end of the day.

Honor is as valuable to the millionaire as to the pauper.

There was the blind personal hatred of Limbaugh, by people who long ago tired of watching him rewrite their plans for the part of America that refuses to submit to them.

Limbaugh’s enemies in that war are angry because they’re frightened. They’re frightened because all of their estimates and projections said they should have been able to claim victory by now.

Limbaugh’s accusers want him burned at the stake for the crime of effective conservatism, not the racism they were so eager to lie about last week.

He is the champion of ideas so powerful that his enemies fear the merest taste of them.

Rush Limbaugh has raised his voice in defense of freedom countless times over the years. I’m happy to exercise my freedom to raise my voice in defense of him. I invite you to do the same. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t “need” it. He deserves it.

I know I sound like a broken record but here goes anyway: excellent Doc, as always.

Sheesh, and people wonder why liberals are constantly portraying conservatives as shallow thinkers and reading-averse — and are able to do so with a fair bit of success among the public? Maybe short attention spans like the above commenter’s have something to do with it.

I think Doc Zero definitely deserves a promotion to the main page: he or she has been on fire lately.

I disagree, the Global Warming crap does use some facts, but just because false conclusions are drawn from them doesn’t make those facts immoral or wrong in any way. I can say factually the following:A) 70% of black children are born to a fatherless home. B)Homicide is the number one reason for death among black males. C)Only 50% of black students graduate HS……….This isn’t racist. Now if I were to conclude that black are in someway inferior to whites, that would be racist and in my true opinion not a fact and in fact false…….On the aside I believe these factual numbers are due to leftist, race baiting, poverty pimps most of whom are white men.

cjk on October 18, 2009 at 9:05 PM

Ok, let’s review the “facts”. What is a fatherless home? Is it a home where the father is never present, rarely present, sometimes present, or often present, but not always present? Where did this datum come from? It certainly didn’t come from the Census — which, in 2006, indicated that 64% of black households contained a family; of all black families, 45% were married-couple. Multiplying .64*.45 gets you 28% — close to 30%. That says that 70% of black households are comprised of unmarried people, but doesn’t say a thing about families — which in the Census is defined as any household unit with children. A family may be comprised of a single parent with children, two unmarried people with children, or two married people with children. From the above, it’s impossible to get a fatherless home rate of 70% unless you count homes with no children as being fatherless.

“Only 50% of black students graduate HS”. Census data indicates 81% of blacks 25 or older had a HS diploma or better in 2006. Census data also indicates that 18.5% of blacks had a college diploma. If this statistic you cite has any validity, it’s quite recent and quite dramatic a change from the “steady state” indicated in the Census.

There are facts, and there are “facts”. The Bureau of the Census is a fairly trustworthy source of facts of the type you have put forth.

You’re sidestepping the issue. I can still cite even your figures without going through the effort to check it all up right now, but my main point remains valid. Are you able to follow a line of thought?

As to this ‘racism’ BS, it’s simply a different flavor of the same poison being spread through our society by the Left: political correctness.

It has the same intent: the silencing of voices and the establishing of acceptable/unacceptable thought. The latter being more pernicious than the former [after all, thought is a ‘conversation’ within yourself].

The tech and application methods may have changed but the principle is the same: the whip and the club.

And it’s hand maidens are: intellectual sloth and ignorance. Another poison that’s being spread by the Left.

That’s why the Left is so intent on removing Rush and his kinsmen from the public square: intellectual engagement and factual truth, the only effective antidotes for the Left’s snake oil. And after they’re done with Rush, they’ll come for every other person who’s passing out that antidote, or knows of it’s existence.

You’re sidestepping the issue. I can still cite even your figures without going through the effort to check it all up right now, but my main point remains valid. Are you able to follow a line of thought?

cjk on October 18, 2009 at 11:35 PM

I didn’t sidestep anything. I said that facts — even “100% true” ones — can be used to justify racism, and you obviously don’t agree with my statement. I’ve shown how it can be done, and I’ve even managed to tear down the factoids you offered — supposedly from what you described as racist white elites.

You seem now to be wedded to those facts — which I have proven false using Census data. Why are you defending factoids put out by people you don’t like?

I’m right on task, and at this point you are now using ad-hominem attacks on my intelligence, because you cannot successfully counter what I’ve said.

The bottom line is that the fact is that blacks lag behind other ethnicities in just about every category and stating those facts isn’t racist. If and when you make a racist judgment because of them, you still haven’t dirtied the individual facts themselves…….If you don’t understand that liberal white poverty pimps and their black helpers aren’t largely responsible for the shape of the black community in the USA today then, yes I am insulting your intelligence here.

I haven’t posted in a while but I have carefully watched the posts of yours that have been promoted. You are “well-spoken” in your writings, and I assume that this comes in part from being “well-read”. Please continue to contribute to HOtair (personal opinion is the with AllahPudit in the lead position it had gotten alittle stale for a while.

I’m on the other side of the world and coming into the comments late and without time to read them, but I would just like to jump up and applaud this post. That really needed to be said. Thanks, Dr. Zero!

Not an NFL fan here, but the NFL did NOT do this to Rush. The Government Controled Press did this!

Pole-Cat on October 19, 2009 at 1:20 AM

I don’t disagree with you entirely, but yes, I believe that the NFL contributed to this “rush” to judgment against Limbaugh.

Why the esteemed owner of the Indianapolis Colts was the first of the owners to speak out saying he would vote against approving the consortium’s purchase – “he wouldn’t be in favor of it” How about the player(s) that stated they wouldn’t play for St Louis if Limbaugh was part owner? A decision based on falsely attributed comments.

I LOVE football, but this debacle has colored my perception on the attitudes of the people who own, play and comment on the NFL. I may have to resort to rooting for the local pee-wee leagues.

This is outrageous! Who will be next to be ostracized in our supposedly free country, simply because of ideology? Would the uproar have been the same if a Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Nancy Pelosi (you get the idea)was asked to be part of a consortium to buy a sports team? A SPORTS team….omg!

I stand with you in support of Rush,
because after over 20 years of listening to his show I’ve yet to hear the man utter one racist comment. In fact, he’s one of the most pleasant and respectful voices in all of radio.

I also herein testify that from this day forward I will NEVER knowingly buy an NFL product, or products endorsed or promoted by NFL players, owners, sponsors, or NFL Game Day broadcast affiliates – to include ABC NBC CBS ESPN et al. So help me God, or until such a time as elRushbo becomes an NFL Team owner! Till then, GO GATORS!

It is a shame that someone who loves football as much as Rush has been sunk by racist and slander by such as Sharpton(who should, by the way, publicly apologize).But, another opportunity will come along and it will be for the better I have no doubt.

Rush Limbaugh has raised his voice in defense of freedom countless times over the years. I’m happy to exercise my freedom to raise my voice in defense of him. I invite you to do the same. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t “need” it. He deserves it.

The problem with Rush is that, he’s a eternal optimist.
He actually believes in a fair playing field. He believes if he buys this team, and treats everyone involved with respect, that he will in turn be accepted. Of course in the real world, that isn’t the case. The sportscasters, who are overwhelmingly liberal, will eternally hate him and blame him for every problem the Rams or the NFL have. The players are made up of 70% minority members, will do to him what they accuse others of doing in not accepting him on his actions as an owner, and reserving judgment until they see it, no they’ll
do what they accuse others of doing in attempting to bar someone from a “club”, for reasons other than his actual actions, and they’ll make up things, anything, to keep him out.